Mar 29, 2024  
Catalogue 2013-2014 
    
Catalogue 2013-2014 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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ENGL 370 - Transnational Literature

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)


This course focuses on literary works and cultural networks that cross the borders of the nation-state. Such border-crossings raise questions concerning vexed phenomena such as globalization, exile, diaspora, and migration-forced and voluntary. Collectively, these phenomena deeply influence the development of transnational cultural identities and practices. Specific topics studied in the course vary from year to year and may include global cities and cosmopolitanisms; the black Atlantic; border theory; the discourses of travel and tourism; global economy and trade; or international terrorism and war.

Topic for 2013/14a: India Elsewhere. “I am writing to you from your far-off country/Far even from us who live here,” Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali writes. The seminar will examine such complexities of location and identity by focusing on literature in English with subcontinental affinities or allegiances. We will examine the literary and visual contexts that have shaped the works, such as religious epics, and popular or “Bollywood” film, as we trace the genealogy of the current boom in the metropolitan Indian-English writing. Critically, the seminar will examine the cruxes of interpretation and interpellation, including controversies over postcolonial exoticism and cosmopolitanism. Works will include Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India, Hari Kunzru’s Gods without Men, Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, Amit Chaudhuri’s Afternoon Raag, and the Nina Paley’s animated film Sita Sings the Blues. Ms. Kane.

Prerequisite(s): Open to Juniors and Seniors with 2 units of 200-level work in English, or by permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.



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